The Flies I use

 

"Fishermen who care too much about the size and numbers of fish they catch are insufferable on good days and as hurried as overworked executives on slow ones".  John Gierach

I don't really believe in "super flies", those semi-mythical concoctions that are supposed to work all of the time.  Many are designed to catch the attention of trout and flyfishers (an attractor) such as the rainbow warrior and not to imitate a natural stream born food item such as your basic drab nymph.  Size, shape and movement are the most important elements of fly design which is probably why the cursed wooley bugger catches so many fish.  I've been high sticking buggers upstream for a few decades and tie them with some weight and a little flash and always in black, olive or brown.  

Drifting buggers so they get down deep makes a lot of sense. They represent a food source that's found near the bottom but are often fished as a mid level streamer being pulled against the current like a baitfish which is not as effective.  That will attract freshly stocked trout but as trout wise up after being stocked that strategy begins to fail.  I remember June and July evenings on the Millers where  a small (size 12) bugger was the ticket until around dusk when I began to see rising trout and then the game changed to light colored soft hackles and then to comparadun flies when the light dimmed.

I would not venture onto a tailwater like the Swift at mid day or later during the early summer without a good supply of the fly pictured in this post.  A soft hackle Sulphur is deadly when the Sulphurs are hatching. High sticking or swinging this fly will get it done. Size 16 is the best.

Remember one thing - early season success, many times, is the result of fishing over new (dumb) fish with flies that mimic nothing that is found in the stream.  You will do well until the season changes and the water flow drops.  I LOVE LOW WATER. Many of our tight line brothers and sisters HATE that condition because those depth charge weighted nymphs sink too fast and get caught up in the weeds. A soft hackle emerger plays in that mid current zone which is what you want!!

Ken

Stoneflies And The Millers

 

Fish sense, applied in the field, is what the old Zen masters would call Enlightenment: simply the ability to see what's right in front of you without having to sift through a lot of thoughts and theories and, yes, expensive fishing tackle."John Gierach

The Millers River is loaded with Stoneflies. When I first started fishing this river back over 30 years ago I was absolutely astonished by the sheer number of stonefly casings found on the rocks along and in the river. Not to be confused with the damsel fly (that's another story) the Stone becomes the main insect for trout hunters from late May through June on the lower Millers from Wendell Depot downstream. It's never been the star of the show upstream in Royalston (Bears Den) like it is miles below.
(photo by Thomas Ames, Jr.)

The Stonefly nymph is more valuable to the fly fisher than the Dry version. Any stimulator/small muddler type will get the job done imitating the egg laying adult. The nymph is one of those aquatic insects that hatches not by rising through the water column but by climbing rocks that protrude above the waters surface or rocks along the shoreline just like damsel flies, many caddis and Isonychia nymphs. This environment is characterized by riffles. Fish the riffles and pocket water in late May and June by dead drifting this fly on a short leash!!

I've featured some stones in the past but my favorites always fall back on a larger nymph that has a yellow/brown cast to it. No need to go nuts with hackle and other things when building stones and I've found that good old ostrich works well imitating gills and legs.

Hook - size 10 nymph hook with some weight added.

Tail - some partridge fibers

Body - I use a synthetic yellow dubbing with some sparkle built into the fibers. Synthetic holds up well to rocks and trout

Gills - light brown ostrich palmered around the full body or by the thorax. I prefer the thorax style.

Wing Pad - I've used everything from duck quill, turkey quill, bunches of pheasant tail fibers and so on. The one above has a pad of Thin Skin which also works (golden oak is the color of the thin skin)

Added Feature - Run a brown sharpee down the back of this fly and you'll have created much of the color scheme of this insect.

All the streams are getting into good shape.  Get out there!!

Ken

My Toughest Trout

"I don't really know how to tie a fly until I've tied a hundred dozen of them". John Gierach

 

First, the toughest trout, the ones that are burned into my memory, have never been Swift or Farmington River trout but are freestone river trout such as two that I took in the Millers and the  Squanacook over a span of 20 years.   Why is that?  That's because those two trout found a spot in the Millers that they felt safe in and never left those two spots for the entire season. Their chosen spots were fairly shallow drifts with overhanging brush which meant your casts had to be PERFECT. One bad cast, and there were many, and they would be down for the day, sometimes longer.  I never really encountered that situation on tailwaters where the whole river is trout friendly. A Summer freestone has fewer friendly spots and you have to find out where they are.

A Squannacook brown took advantage of it's overhanging cover for over two months until a perfect cast of a size 16 sulphur (type) fooled that 16 inch brown.

I fished for a very reluctant brown on the Millers from early June until my October birthday. Its spot in the current was almost impossible to present a dry fly to. It was still hitting emergers even after a night time rain so I switched over to a size 16 partridge and orange SH, draped the leader over a boulder and finally hooked it.  It was only 12 inches long but if every future trout is exactly like that one I would be fine. P.S.

In short, I've caught plenty of bigger trout but not better trout.

P.S.

There's a brown on the Ware River that has found the perfect hiding place and has tempted me for two years. Maybe this year.....

Ken

WHY RAINBOWS?

 Really, the only thing a psychiatrist can do that a good fishing guide can't do is write prescriptions.  John Gierach

It happens every year, rainbows get stocked by the truck load BUT by mid summer they are a dissapearing act. But browns seem to hold over through the Summer into the Fall.  You see this every year and the surveys through the Summer prove this. I've been envolved with some surveys by the DFW in September where all we sampled into September were browns.  This is really true on the Millers.  Where do the bows go?  The ANSWER is they just don't make it through the Summer, period!!! There is the odd year where you can catch bows late into the season BEFORE the Fall stocking as in 1992.  Lets face it - bows don't make it though the Summer season!

The exception is the EB of the Westfield where, for some reason (very good water flows) they seem to survive.

Why am I venting?  It's because we would like to see (I hope) trout that will provide SEASON LONG fishing.  That makes sense to me.  No mistake, I'm talking about freestone streams like the Millers and the Ware.  We would have great late Spring and Summer fishing if the game was with browns and not the reliance on bows.  I saw a video of some anglers waving the pom-poms because of a Fall rainbow stocking on their NH river.  How about browns?? That river just  SCREAMS of brown trout!!

Remember, the early season bows that you catch are easy fish and are not an indicator of your angling skill. That skill comes into play when the insects really start hatching.

Ken

The Big And Wonderful Damsel Fly

 

We all have our favorite fly hatches. The Sulphers on the Swift and the BWO's are two of mine on this Massachusetts  river as are the Quill Gordons on the Ware.  The Millers has so many caddis and then you dump in the stoneflies and the mid summer cahills and you can have more than you can deal with.  But the hatch that can raise my blood pressure is the Damsel Fly hatch. 

There is nothing dainty about this hatch. The adult insect is BIG and a beautiful pale green color BUT it's not the focus of our efforts. The focus is the drab nymph which emerges along the shoreline of our freestones and then climbs onto rocks and logs to hatch.  This is not an early morning event or an evening event but a mid day event on the sunniest early June day you can find. When you see the hatching insects on the shore it is time to FISH!!!

The Millers is loaded with them. I've seen trout beach themselves down by the Kempfield Pool trying to catch these nymphs.  The EB has the most and a small (size 14 curved nymph hook from Sabre hooks) can give you a double digit day.  The best thing is to get into the middle of the Bliss Pool on the EB and cast to the opposite shoreline.  During a heavy hatch you can see trout slashing around the shoreline because that's where the nymphs are!!

What to use?  Remember the hook style I mentioned above.  Tie a bugger style fly in brown or grey, cast to the shore and give it a short quick strip or two.

Forget the tailwaters because the damsels don't like them.  It's a freestone game.

Check out the photo above. You can see the beautiful adult insect and two of the casings of the nymph on the rock.

Keep tying!!!!!

Ken

The Sparkle Emerger

 

The solution to any problem - work, love, moneu, whatever - is to go fishing, and the worse the problem, the longer the trip should be."  - John Gierach

A great fly for the Swift and the Farmington, the Sparkle Emerger fills the bill when you need that tiny emerger to work through the riffles when the trout are working the riffles.

It is very easy to tie:

Hook- any curved scud hook will do in sizes 18 through 24

Body - I use Coats & Clark all purpose thread because it gives the fly that wonderful segmented body.  I like the color brown, black and olive in that order.

Wing Stub - 2 strands of midge crystal clipped short.

Head - tie off the body thread and switch to 12/0 black thread for the head. 

This fly has been a killer at the Pipe and the Bubbler Run on the Swift.

A big snow storm tonight.  Time to tie some flies!!

Ken

R.I.P Size 32

 "Something to think about: If you fish the wrong fly long and hard enough, it will sooner or later become the right fly". John Gierach

It appears that the size 32 hook is heading to the fly fishing graveyard or to the endangered s.pecies list at least.  Not to worry. We will just borrow an old trick used by Atantic Salmon fly fishers and that is the "reduced fly".

Now, you are probably asking yourself " what is a reduced fly?"  Simply put, it's a small fly tied on a larger hook. The Salmon gang have been doing this for years when faced with low flows in rivers. The salmon would strike at the "fly" portion and would ignore the large bare hook portion. (trout do the same thing by ignoring the large curved piece of steel sticking out of the butt of the fly!)

I've been tying size 28 and 30 flies on size 24 hooks using this method. In the above photo you will see that the rear portion of the hook is bare and all of the material is up at the thorax. All of that material mimics a size 30 fly.  Here's the important point: the trout are not bothered by the bare hook and that larger hook increases hooking success.

It's March and even though snow is in the forecast we are heading towards Spring and it feels great.

Ken